Daniel Suárez tries to focus on big picture following runner-up finish at Atlanta

HAMPTON, Ga. — Daniel Suárez needed to leave the opening round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a good points day after entering Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway only one point above the elimination line to advance to the Round of 12.

A second-place finish after the checkered flag fell in NASCAR Overtime might indicate it was mission successful. Still, for Suárez, the bitterness of not winning after leading before the final caution fell almost outweighs the positives of the big-picture fight.

“It kinda stings that we’re not in Victory Lane,” Suárez said on pit road following the 400-mile event. “That’s racing, we have to continue to work, but it’s good starting out in the playoffs. Honestly, right now I don’t care about the points. It just hurts that we’re not in Victory Lane.”

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It was a team-versus-team showdown on the final restart as the premier series’ best looked to punch their ticket into the next round of the playoffs with Team Penske’s Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney lined up on the inside against Trackhouse Racing’s Suárez and Ross Chastain defending the top.

It was an almost-perfect scenario for the Monterrey, Mexico native looking to defend the win from February and go back-to-back at the 1.5-mile superspeedway-style track that propelled him into the postseason hunt. But ultimately, Logano stood tall as Chastain fell back in Turns 3 and 4 coming to the white flag, leaving Suárez with no help and settling for a runner-up spot.

“I can’t thank the No. 1 team enough,” Suárez said. “He pushed me very, very good on the restart, all the way through Turns 1 and 2 and through Turns 3 and 4. He kept me in position; we were right there in the fight with the second push. After the second push, I don’t know if he got a flat tire or what, I don’t know what happened exactly but once I lost him, I knew that it was game over because that was my dancing partner.”

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Crew chief Matt Swiderski, on top of the box for the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, was tasked with keeping his driver focused on the big picture under the final caution, encouraging Suárez to take what the track would give him in the final two laps in overtime.

“We had a good car,” Swiderski told NASCAR.com while pushing his second-place car back to the Cup Series garage. “I got us a little crossed up on pit road getting into (Logano), so the team did a good job at getting back up front and getting it fixed. Really, we just had to look for big picture as bad as we wanted to win it, we will still take this.

“I think we feel really good about Watkins Glen. That is a place that we can go to and have a really strong day and hopefully build a little bit of a gap going into Bristol. That can go either way; you could be wrecked out early there. So, if we could just build a little cushion there, we would feel a lot better about it.”

Suárez leaves Atlanta 22 points above the elimination line in ninth place on the playoff grid heading to the road course at Watkins Glen International on Sept. 15 (3 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, NBC Sports App, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).